That Abdel Fateh Younes, the longtime enforcer for Muammar Qaddafi whose stunning defection to the Libyan rebellion in February was an early indication of the depth of the challenge to Qaddafi’s regime, is dead, you can take to the bank. General Younes had been head of the embryonic rebel army from practically the moment he’d switched sides.

As far as the rest of the story – who killed him, when, precisely where, and why – all remains murk and conjecture, created by cross-cutting rivalries within the rebellion and the often misleading and contradictory way that Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC) communicates with the press and the Libyan public.

Let’s recap, we can drop thousands of tons of bombs on Libya, kill civilians, destroy infrastructure, and yet Muammar Gaddafi is still alive and well, thumbing his nose at Obama. Meanwhile, our Libyan allies, the Transitional National Council (TNC) are busy killing each other and they have no hope of ever sacking Tripoli. So, The Beat Goes On, a stalemate and, adding insult to ridiculousness, the U.S. taxpayer is stuck picking up the tab for this “Three Stooges go to war” farce.

/where’s Samantha Power been these last few months, anyone seen her, she’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do?

Obama couldn’t wait to bomb Libya using the flimsy excuse of “protecting civilians”. Well, Bashar al-Assad has killed at least as many civilians as Moammar Gadhafi ever did and today Assad backed mobs attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus, arguably an act of war. Why aren’t we bombing Syria and demanding that Assad leave the country? What’s Obama waiting for, another Iranian hostage situation?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has lost the legitimacy to rule after pro-government demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Monday in what U.S. officials described as an orchestrated attack.

Regime supporters hurled rocks, smashed windows and tore down the American flag at the embassy, triggering the strongest U.S. condemnation yet of the Syrian government. Clinton suggested that the United States is contemplating the prospect of a post-Assad future in Syria nearly four months into a brutal government crackdown on pro-democracy activists inspired by the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia.

Is this what passes for consistent foreign policy in the Obama administration? The leaders of both Libya and Syria have killed thousands of civilians. Syria is infinitely more of a threat to U.S. national security than Libya is. Yet we’re bombing the [expletive deleted] out of Libya and trying to kill Gadhafi or drive him out of Libya at the same time we’re politely, diplomatically “condemning” Syria and giving Assad a total free pass. WTF?

/if we have a legitimate reason to be doing what we’re doing in Libya, we have even more of a legitimate reason to be doing even more of it in Syria and, by corollary, if we’re going to do nothing concrete about Syria’s brutal crackdown on civilians, we have absolutely no business whatsoever bombing Libya and we should get the hell out immediately, we’ve already done enough human and infrastructure damage there without any tangible results

Iran fired 14 missiles and unveiled underground ballistic missile silos today, kicking off a series of war games over the next 10 days. Some of the missiles, launched today, have a range of more than 1,200 miles – enough to reach Israel and American installations in the region, Iranian PressTV reports.

Longer-range missiles are not likely to be built because all of Iran’s desired targets are already in reach with its current missiles, said Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division.

“We possess the technology to build missiles with longer ranges but we do not need missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers and we do not intend to produce them,” Mr. Hajizadeh said from the sidelines of the drills, which are known as Great Prophet 6. “Iran’s missiles have a range of up to 2,000 kilometers and have been designed for US and the Zionist regime [Israel]’s bases in the region.”

Ten years ago we could have crushed the Iranian threat without too much trouble. Now, I’m not so sure. We may have passed a tipping point where it’s now impossible to stop Iran’s nuclear program or the cost of stopping it is prohibitive and unacceptable. It’s bad enough that Iran has been allowed to pursue their atomic weapons program pretty much unimpeded, but now it appears that they have the missile technology to reliably deliver nuclear warheads anywhere in the region. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

/I wouldn’t be surprised if, sometime in the not so distant future, we witness an Iranian detonation test of an atomic device

The Committee of Parties’ Affairs on Monday gave a final and official nod to the Freedom and Justice Party, which was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, to become the first party declared after the fall of Hosni Mubarak regime.

It’s Sunni versus Shia as Bahrain’s Suuni rulers have had just about enough of their Shia population’s ongoing uprising and have called on their fellow Sunnis, the Saudis, to help put down the Shia revolt.

Saudi Arabian troops have crossed into Bahrain after the tiny Gulf kingdom’s ruling family asked for help from neighbouring Sunni Arab states to quell a two-month uprising which threatens their 200-year-old dynasty.

The Saudi capital, Riyadh, said that it had responded to a “security threat” by deploying its troops on the streets of its neighbour. They are to protect strategic sites such as bridges and government buildings. Bahrain’s rulers said the Saudi forces crossed the 16-mile causeway from Saudi Arabia to the island, together a contingent of troops from the Gulf Co-operation Council. Saudi authorities did not give details of the force; some reports estimate it to be 1,000.

Bahrain’s Shia majority has laid siege to the centre of the capital, Manama, since mid-February and has, in recent days, marched on government buildings and palaces.

Make no mistake about it, the Shia uprising in Bahrain and all the Shia unrest throughout the region is being directly instigated by Iran and her agents.

/if this turmoil somehow escalates into a direct confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, hopefully the Obama/Hillary foreign policy clown posse can keep track of which side the United States’ bread is buttered on

Libya’s Justice Minister who quit the post in protest against the brutal repression of anti-government protests has alleged that Libyan leader Moammer Gaddafi ordered the 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who resigned on Monday, told Sweden’s Expressen daily that he had proof that the despot gave the order for the deadliest attack blamed on Gaddafi’s regime that claimed 270 lives.

It’s just a matter of time now. Gaddafi is holed up in a section of Tripoli and he’s fast running out of friends with heavy weapons that haven’t already switched sides. There’s no way he gets out of this uprising alive. The sooner Gaddafi is dead, the better, let’s get this over with. And if the U.S. needed any more reason to pick sides in this revolt, besides the fact that Gaddafi is massacring civilians, this Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing confirmation should be impetus enough to get our ass off the sidelines of this conflict.

/at a minimum, we should be enforcing a no fly zone over Libya to prevent Gaddafi from using what’s left of his air power to bomb and rocket even more civilians